


different, better, grown

by ifthebookdoesntsell



Category: Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: F/F, Poetry, cadina, i guess poetry kinda?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:22:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27530719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifthebookdoesntsell/pseuds/ifthebookdoesntsell
Summary: It all begins like this: it is somewhere in the middle of May and spring break is still gasping at its last bits of freshness. It is too late to stop, but not too late for regret and still, somehow nothing hurts.They get coffee together most days, all the while insisting that none of their meet-ups are dates. They hold hands and try not to kiss goodbye, text late into the night. Regina has Cady over one day, and they end up falling into bed together.Cady kisses Regina hard and fast, twists her wrist just so and falls a little bit in love with how Regina looks breaking beneath her. They order Chinese food after.They drift off in each other’s arms.(Or, the one where they learn to fall in love over and over.)
Relationships: Regina George/Cady Heron
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31





	different, better, grown

**Author's Note:**

> hey folks. i hope you've had a good week! here's a little quick something i wrote. i hope y'all are all staying safe :)
> 
> here's a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2EzBiqhfHXGLJw1c5vB1Mw?si=s2hhmnr0SQScOYjfLuxZeQ/) to go along with this piece. 
> 
> (i did not plan on posting today, or honestly this week. but then an anon came into my inbox and i thought, hey, instead of ignoring and deleting, let's use it as inspiration. so, i dusted off an old summary i wrote, fluffed it up a bit and here y'all go. it's again not as polished as some of my other stuff, and it's not as dialogue heavy as some of my other pieces, but i hope that you'll give it a chance anyway. 
> 
> moral of the story: don't be rude to fanfic authors because we'll write the exact thing that you complained about just to prove a point and do our best to make it good along the way.)

They’re happy. Confidently. Wonderfully. 

Their happiness is game nights, and pop songs, the way the other's light stings their eyes in the morning when they open their eyes too fast in hopes of getting a glimpse of each other. Their happiness is the way Regina will awaken in Cady’s arms and no longer squirm away with a blush, will make coffee for the both of them before her girlfriend can even ask. 

They’re different, better, grown. It takes years of waiting, and wondering, but now, they’re in a new part of their story together. 

It all begins like this: it is somewhere in the middle of May, and spring break is still gasping at its last bits of freshness. It is too late to stop, but not too late for regret and still, somehow nothing hurts. 

They get coffee together most days, all the while insisting that none of their meet-ups are dates. They hold hands and try not to kiss goodbye, text late into the night. Regina has Cady over one day, and they end up falling into bed together. 

Cady kisses Regina hard and fast, twists her wrist just so, and falls a little bit in love with how Regina looks breaking beneath her. They order Chinese food after. 

They drift off in each other’s arms. 

Oddly, they both remind each other of people they once knew, and they can't quite place it until one day they realize; they remind each other of themselves. The _them_ they could have been if they had just _said something_ , if they had just decided to _try_ way back when.

And now, they have, and it's perfect and it’s gorgeous and they both think that maybe having your heart beat for somebody isn’t so bad when theirs beats for you too. 

There’s a terror that comes with love; for Regina, the thought of showing her weakness is almost suffocating. Cady sees her so clearly, knows every inch of her, and this alone is enough to worry her beyond belief. 

She can’t risk opening her heart, can’t imagine doing so willingly, but she feels it happening, and so she braces for a foreign kind of hurt. Because it's not quite time for tragedy-- or maybe that time has passed? She’s endured so much sadness in her life. She's unsure if it will ever stop-- but it is time for curiosity, and she thinks maybe, just maybe she can be happy. 

The danger of it maddens her: that feeling of being offered the possibility of heartbreak and for the first time in her life deciding to take something without thought. 

It’s all too easy, having the knowledge that she could be broken, but allowing it to happen anyway. Because this is Cady she's talking about. And she knows that the woman will do her best to be gentle. She knows that Cady wouldn't hurt a tiny fly. But Regina is not a fly. She is a woman. And she is so tired of being a woman and therefore being hurt and let down. 

Still, deep inside, she knows that won't happen with Cady. So, she lets her in, and she lets the woman hold her when she cries and laughs at her jokes.

She lets herself be seen. 

And slowly, so slowly, she realizes everything she has been missing. She realizes how empowering it is; to grab the heartbreak she thought she feared by the hand.

Because if she’s honest, it isn’t heartbreak at all. 

All this time, Regina was afraid to be loved, afraid for somebody to see what was inside, afraid that they would realize she didn't have a heart at all. Because all her life, Regina George has been trying to rip out her heart and replace it with a machine that does everything just the same. Or, she thought it did everything just the same. But she forgot one thing; she forgot that if she ripped her soul from her heart, if she just left the flesh and blood, it would not be the same because she would forget how to feel.

And for the longest time, she did.

She forgot.

But then, Cady Heron came into the cafeteria, and she felt something ignite deep within her. 

"I love your bracelet," she said. What she meant was, _"I think I could love you."_

And maybe it is quite dumb and presumptuous to think that she fell in love the first day they met, but she did. She knows it. Because the _Us_ she’s built with Cady? It’s become a keepsake, a certainty she can lean on. Something real and rare. 

And for the first time, Regina is able to wonder if she’s in love. 

It slips out in a way she didn't intend, but now she doesn't want to take it back. It's early. Regina wakes to find the spot next to her to be empty-- which never happens because Cady always gets up later-- but then she awakens more fully and smells bacon and hears the sound of the coffee maker.

She smiles to herself. 

Pulling a t-shirt over her head, Regina begins to walk downstairs and sees the most gorgeous sight: Cady in her pajamas dancing softly to low music with her glasses sliding down her nose. Cady doesn't know she's there, so lost in her own world; it's one of the things Regina loves about her. She stands around the corner watching Cady dance, and she feels her own expression softening beyond anything she's ever felt before. 

There’s something new, and different, and maybe a little scary blooming in her chest. 

_(Is this it? Love?_ )

She’s felt it coming for a while, tried to tamp it down, but seeing Cady like this makes it impossible for her to ignore any longer. 

The words tumble from her lips before she can stop them; her legs carry her before she can put them to a halt; her arms wrap around Cady and she whispers those three little words into her neck. 

Cady freezes, and Regina thinks maybe she had it wrong, maybe it was a mistake. But then Cady is turning herself around in Regina's grasp and whispering it back over and over, only stopping when she hears the bacon crackling. Regina loses count of how many times Cady says it in that moment; all she knows is that she’s never felt like this, never known what it’s like to be loved without condition. 

When they're in separate states, they'll just sit on the line and listen to each other breathe. They run out of words and that's okay, but there's something so intimate about the breaths that they take: the long, shuddered ones that sound like a hard day and coming home, the short breaths Cady lets out after the blonde says something to make her laugh, the sighs after yawns when the redhead is two hours later in Chicago but wants to stay awake to hear Regina fall asleep. 

Rationally, she knows she won't hear Regina stumble into her slumber. Her girlfriend doesn't snore and is dead to the world when she passes out, but she likes to hear the silence-- the peace-- wash over Regina the same way she likes to hear her come through the front door after a hard day and know that now all is right in the world. 

There's something comforting about knowing your love is sleeping somewhere, dreaming of you, that they are safe, and protected, and it doesn't matter what goes on outside for just that little moment when they drift from one kind of consciousness to another, a life where they are free in their dreams and safe from their nightmares.

Cady doesn't voice any of this as she hears the phone get placed on the pillow that's normally her spot, and she smiles at the way she knows Regina is taking out her contacts in the other room and putting on pajama pants, how she knows exactly how Regina looks like that without even having to look at her; the same way that she can hear her voice if she just closes her eyes; the same way she can hear the steady thumping of Regina's heartbeat that is normally her urges her towards sleep. 

So, yes, in short, they stay on the line and listen to each other breathe.

But it's possible that they say more in those moments of silence than most couples do when they have their "mandatory" nightly rendezvous in the kitchen to get a glass of water before bed.

(Those people don't say it's mandatory, but Regina and Cady can’t help but roll their eyes at the couples that find that it needs to be a requirement to talk to each other every night.) 

They say _I love you_ and _I'm glad you got home safe_ ; they say _I wish you were holding me_ and _come back soon_.

They say so many things that Cady knows it might seem silly to some. 

It might seem silly to think that Regina is thinking the same thing, but there’s one night where most of the darkness has passed: 1am for Regina. 3am for Cady. It changes everything. 

The words are so quiet that if Cady hadn’t had the phone pressed eagerly to her ear, she would have missed it. 

“What was that?” she asks, and she can hear the hesitation on the other end of the line. 

Regina admits into the dark that she's glad Cady calls every night she's away because while Cady is listening to Regina fall asleep, Regina is listening to Cady breathe, a sound that has turned into her midnight song. It’s a soft sort of tune, enough to lull her asleep. She whispers that she's glad that Cady doesn't fall asleep before her, because she likes knowing she's being watched over by someone who loves her without needing or wanting something in return.

Cady blushes. Regina’s sleepy voice murmurs, _I love you._

But of course, all good things fall apart. It’s hard to be away, to not see each other, to long for each other. It is difficult to pretend like nothing hurts. Most days, they’re okay, but there start to be cracks in the armor, in the carefully built bridge they strung between them.

There’s only so many times that Regina will be okay with hearing Cady moan her name into the phone when she’s unable to touch her, only so many times that FaceTime will be enough. There’s only so many times that Regina can whisper dark and rough that she can’t wait to be in bed with her girlfriend again. 

There’s only so many times that they can confirm their affection with a quiet _I miss you_ before it sounds robotic. 

It becomes difficult to differentiate between what is love and what is just easy. 

They break up, and it’s quiet. So, so quiet. 

They think of each other for months— both too shy to reach out, to ask what the other is thinking— and by the time they speak again it’s been years. It’s been years of missing each other on purpose, of refusing to fall in love with other people because falling in love is for suckers and they never want to break somebody’s heart again. They are still holding pieces of the one person they still want to love, but they are both too afraid to admit it.

They wonder if their love was even real, if maybe it was all a fever dream that moved on too quick, the kind that they’d gladly live over and over even if it meant they’d be hot and uncomfortable and sick for the rest of their lives.

It’s finally when the world is ending that they meet again. Not really. But Regina’s mother dies, and before she can stop herself she’s calling Cady, telling her that she needs somebody, that she needs her, and Cady is on the first plane back to Illinois.

It’s stupid. It’s foolish. It’s downright destructive that the first thing they do is kiss. And yet, neither of them care. It feels like they’re young again, free of the way life has weighed them down, burdened them with a purpose that seems to have gotten lost since the last time they said I love you to each other.

It feels like forgiveness. It feels like growth. It feels like being repaired. 

It feels like falling all over again, like descending back into a wonderfully lucid dream. 

The funeral comes and goes, and Cady never leaves. She’s unsure if she ever planned to. Regina holds her tight, crying, and Cady kisses her forehead. 

_I’m here. I’m here. We made it. I love you. I mean it._

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! i hope that you enjoyed. if you did, consider dropping me a comment/kudo. it would make me smile. 
> 
> as always, i'm @ifthebookdoesntsell on tumblr. my askbox is open. 
> 
> be safe x


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